Leadership

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Punish Illegal Employers

Thursday, December 1st, 2022

Now that the election is over, conservative smoke and mirror politics is evaporating right before our eyes.  Gas prices have dropped to $2.60 in North Texas.  Fox News has stopped spamming crime stories.  Retailers are slashing holiday prices and seeing record sales. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, however, has returned to inflammatory talk about the border.  […]

Deceitful Donald

Thursday, November 17th, 2022

At the beginning of the Second Gulf War, Vice President Dick Cheney confidently told us that American troops would be greeted as liberators.  We know that was a lie.  Like the Weapons of Mass Destruction lie, the Bush Administration told it to avoid facing reality. These lies were deadly and costly.  When the last American […]

La même chose

Thursday, November 10th, 2022

It is a truism that elections have consequences.  No doubt this Tuesday election will also, but it will not change much.  All across the country voters dug into familiar patterns rather than alter course. Nationally, President Joe Biden can lock in his legislative victories.  Here to stay are the insulin price cap for seniors, lower […]

Snake Oil Fraud

Thursday, November 3rd, 2022

Leadership requires correctly identifying problems and developing solutions. Demagogues often recognize when others are in pain, but they then exploit the pain for personal gain.  This technique helps the politician gain, and solidify, power.  Demagogues behave exactly like snake oil salesmen.  Before the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906), capitalists crisscrossed the country offering a […]

Straw Man

Thursday, October 13th, 2022

Boxers and soldiers often train fighting dummies.  It is easy to understand why.  Dummies don’t fight back.  Eventually, however, a good fighters needs to train against another human as an opponent if they want to win a real fight. Debates work similarly with words.  Some debaters only fight straw men; others, preferring a challenge, argue […]

I Wish I Were A Rich Man?

Thursday, October 6th, 2022

I am always struck when I come to the end of the Good Samaritan parable in the gospel of Luke. The parable ends with the rich man begging Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his brothers. Abraham ridicules the rich man. Abraham said “If they do not listen to Moses and […]

Solutions, Not Fear

Thursday, September 29th, 2022

Conservatives politicians make two promises. They promise that government can’t work when they are elected. They promise to run government like their personal business.  Why are we surprised when things turn out good for them and their friends but bad for us? Conservative politicians are on television complaining about everybody else except themselves. They have […]

Public Service vs. Private Profit

Thursday, September 15th, 2022

Conservatives have been pretty clear about one aspect of their governing philosophy.  They say that they will run government like a business.  Liberals, however, see government as public services.  The results are dramatically different. Liberal policies shaped American politics after the Great Depression.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt provided a role model for creating government services.  The […]

Team USA

Thursday, August 11th, 2022

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it gets better.  Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the global recovery from Covid 19 stalled.  Global traders panic, driving up prices and clogging supply chains. Market fears of a new, and wider, disruption never materialized, however.  Energy supply remained strong, as Europeans carefully rebalanced their energy […]

Can You Tell the Difference?

Thursday, August 4th, 2022

Misdirection is a common technique used by con men.  Con men create a distraction that looks threatening, and then they use it to steal from you.  They could bump into you.  They could even have accomplishes who start a fake argument. Con men appear often in the Gospels.  They did not like Jesus’ interpretation of […]

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